For nearly a decade, students at Bridgeport High School and anyone else with an interest in happenings there could log on to the school’s Web site. This year, however, a couple of students decided that after 10 years those coming to the Web site needed to get a refreshed look.

 

Recently graduated senior Alaina Shreves and sophomore-to-be James LaRosa, with the blessing of journalism teacher Alice Rowe, decided they would revamp the Web site. It wasn’t because the old site was awful. Rather, both felt it was time for a change.

 

“We looked at it and we knew, everyone knew, we needed a new Web site,” said Shreves, who will be attending the College of William and Mary this fall. “The old one had been there for 10 years and it needed a new look. It needed a fresh look. It still served its purpose, but it was dated and it wasn’t as user friendly as it needed to be.”

 

Shreves and LaRosa were tasked with moving ahead. The first step was finding the right program to model the revised Web site off of.

 

“We downloaded a program called Dreamweaver and went from there,” said LaRosa. “We had to learn the program as we went along. It was a lot of fun, but it was also really stressful at times.”

 

Stressful enough that work started in August. And stressful enough that the official re-launch happened May 28.

 

“We lost time to things we didn’t expect such as all of the snow days. Plus, we lost the ability to use our computers due to them being needed for WESTTEST,” said Shreves, who edited the Web site as a junior with Michael Fouts.

 

While the time frame didn’t go as planned, the fact that both students aren’t intimidated by the technology boded well for the new site. Shreves, in fact, has made Web sites for local business, including Art Works.

 

LaRosa’s ability to create a Web site isn’t the result of building them. His venture into technology is one often related to individuals his age – gaming.

 

“When I was little, I played on my Game Cube and my understanding of how things worked started from there,” said LaRosa. “I pick things up pretty fast with technology, but there was some time in getting the creation of this Web site down.”

 

Since the Web site’s re-launch, there’s been an increase in traffic based on the analytics. To make sure things went smoothly, Shreves and LaRosa spent several days ironing out minor glitches that came up after going live.

 

The new page is crisp, clean and simple. A menu directs you to the information, as well as links for other information about the Bridgeport community are available. There is also contact information for those wanting additional information about the school.

 

“It’s really exciting to see something like this pay off as I’m leaving. Hopefully, this new site will attract people to visit long after I’m gone from there,” said Shreves. “Eventually someone else will upgrade it, but I hope there are many years of use from this.”

 

While Shreves is leaving, LaRosa will remain. He’s listed as one of the site’s editors and will maintain that role next year.

 

“I’m looking forward to it,” said LaRosa. “I’d like to have a mobile site for it next year … which would include an app for it. There are a lot of things that could be done.”

 

Click HERE to go to the newly designed page.